Mexico City, Mexico, Aug 31, 2004 / 22:00 pm
On Tuesday the Hispanic Seminary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, which provides priestly formation for Hispanic vocations from the United States, celebrated its fifth anniversary.
The anniversary ceremony, which was attended by Bishop Jose Gomez, Auxiliary Bishop of Denver and member of the seminary’s board of directors, also marked the beginning of the new academic year for the more than 30 seminarians from the US and Canada.
During his remarks, Bishop Gomez emphasized the growing challenges for Hispanic ministry in the US, recalling that although the US is a country of immigrants, “the volume of the Hispanic population, which is without precedent or comparison with any other wave of immigrants in the past, reveals the complexity involved in assimilating and appropriately integrating this population, without sacrificing its values, and explains why xenophobic expressions are becoming common.”
Bishop Gomez also pointed out that although “a formal response of support for immigrants” exists among US bishops, society is “overwhelmed: in Colorado, for example, where Catholics were originally 17% of the population, the growth of the Hispanic population, which in the last 10 years has been 76%, is overwhelming to any institution, far beyond anyone’s good will and good intentions.”